One-time recovery codes

Name: One-time recovery codes
Creator: TestPattern Community
License: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

Identifies one-time recovery codes patterns in security and access control contexts. Detects potential exposure of sensitive security information in Australian systems.

Type: regex
Engine: boost_regex
Confidence: medium
Confidence justification: category-aware structural regex with anchor and context constraints replaces phrase-only detection.
Detection quality: Mixed
Jurisdictions: global
Regulations: Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth), NDB Scheme (Cth), SOCI Act 2018 (Cth), TIA Act 1979 (Cth)
Frameworks: CIS Controls, DISP, ISO 27001, NIST CSF, PCI-DSS, SOC 2
Data categories: credentials, security
Scope: wide
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Degraded, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?is)\b(?:one[\s-]+time\s+recovery\s+codes|recovery\s+codes|backup\s+codes|one[\s-]+time\s+password|emergency\s+access|recovery\s+key|account\s+recovery|single[\s-]+use\s+codes|scratch\s+codes|mfa\s+recovery)\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

one-time recovery codes, one, time, recovery, codes, credentials, keys, secrets

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

one-time recovery codes — Primary topic phrase match
recovery codes — Case-insensitive topic phrase match
backup codes — Alternative topic phrase match
one-time password — Additional topic phrase match

Should not match

unrelated generic text without domain phrases — No relevant topic phrases present
placeholder value 12345 — Random text should not match topic-specific regex
secret mfa — Generic word pair from old broad template should not match

Known false positives

Authentication-related terminology in software documentation, security training materials, or system architecture descriptions without actual credentials. Mitigation: Require proximity to credential-specific patterns (API keys, connection strings, tokens) rather than general security terminology.
Code snippets and configuration examples containing credential-related keywords or placeholder values in developer documentation. Mitigation: Check for common placeholder patterns (example.com, localhost, 0000) and documentation file types to reduce false positives from technical writing.